Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced on Tuesday that the Department of Health and Human Services is withholding an additional $1.2 billion in federal Medicaid funding from California.
“I’ll make this announcement today on behalf of Secretary [Robert F.] Kennedy, Health and Human Services, that we are going to defer $1.2 billion more dollars from California,” Oz told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “They just got the note, and we’re doing that because the growth of personal care services in California, just that one little area where you’re paying someone to carry groceries upstairs for your mom, which many of you would carry groceries upstairs for your mom for free, I would think.”
Oz added that California’s approval of Medicaid-covered personal care services has grown by 24% in the last three years.
“That is twice the rate of every other state average in the country, impossible for us to understand how that could be so,” he said. “So we’re taking major action in California again – $1.2 billion deferred in their Medicaid payments directed to personal care services.”
ZACHARIA OUSTER RAISES QUESTION ABOUT IMPORTANCE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
Oz made the announcement during an Oval Office event for the White House’s new Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program, through which the Trump administration will now reward tipsters who report alleged cases of fraud, waste, and abuse.
“Independent journalists, and everybody, and all Americans, will now be able to go to the fraud.gov [website] and report cases of corruption and theft of taxpayer dollars in their communities,” President Donald Trump told reporters. “You let’s say report and you find a billion dollars, we are giving a commission to that person of 1%. It’s a lot of money, and if it’s $10 billion, $200 billion, $400 billion, we’re giving a 1% commission to that person.”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
